An Israeli filmmaker put the OLP archives, raising questions about Palestinian heritage and identity.
Has Palestinian history been carefully recorded by the first filmmakers of the 20th century as a means of preserving their heritage? Or were they, as some Israelis simply claim disorganized amateurs operating on basic equipment in a primitive society?
In this documentary, Israeli researcher and filmmaker Karnit Mandel discovers unpublished images of Palestinian life and history in a box of old VHS bands. The tapes are a small sample of a huge archive seized of the PLO during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 in 1982. Mandel tried to recover it from the Israeli army but faces obstacles and overwhelming bureaucracy. It hears a range of contrasting views, Palestinians who describe a well -developed film industry in the 1930s to disdainful Israeli historians who say that Palestinian cinema has never existed at all. In the end, Mandel is forced to abandon his research – but this highlights the continuous struggle for narrative control over the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory.
